Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1887-08-25

savages as needed revision and amend
ment. Many a meal I have enjoved in
the neat little dining room, and many a
night have sat around the big fire IN the
kitchen, that is, as far around as L could
get listening to the fearful narrative of
Long Dog or to the prairie news that the
Broad Necklace brought in. There was
no presage of danger then, nothing
prophetic of the wild fearful night that
was rolling round the earth for the happy
trader and his pretty wife.
Want of food was the origin of the
trouble. That may seem strange state
ment, when compared with the descrip-
ton of the Indians successes, but day
came when the buffalo started south and
crossed the Missouri river, where the
Sioux dared not follow. Even the ante
lope wandered away, and the pra1rles were
left barren of game. AS a matter of
course there was nothing on hand. Your
Indian is not a thrifty person. Give a
quantity of food to a savage and there is
no work done until the latter has absorb
ed the former. The idea of depositing
grub in the bank has never found much
favor on the plains, and when one year
the fall frosts came, bringing with them
the promise of winter, and the last hoof
disappeared, the detected Sioux looked at
each others stomachs and wondered how
long they would stand out full and round
without artificial encourag ement. There
were fish in abundance, few jack rab-
bits and whole colonies of gophers; but
your Indian is sensitive party, and will
hunt nothing that he can't hunt on
horse. He can fast indefinitely, but his
spirit is above small game. SO our
friends, the hostiIes, settled down to a
comfortable family starve. And it was
right there that Mr.. Edward Allen made
a bit of mistake. Had he closed his
store, as the civilized merchant does
when famine sets in, he had kept himself
out of difficulty, but he didn't. Touched
with an unnecessary sentiment of pity.
he began to give away quantities of food,
and, naturally, he came to grief. Unfor-
tunately for Mr.. Allen he was practical
man. Had he understood that philan-
throphy is purely a speculative science.
he had Jared much better. But he went
about philanthropy as he went about his
business, and, consequently, he dropped
into trouble, The more he gave, the
more mportunate became his benetcl-
aries.
They asked, they begged, and then de-
manded more. Thereupon Mr.. Allen did
what he should have done in the first
place = shut up his shop and went home
to his wife who had few months prev
iously presented him with baby. This
exasperated his customers, and the dance
opened. Mind You he had six men in his
employ. There were fifteen at the fort
under Walsh. The Sioux numbered 500
and the nearest help was 2l0 miles to tt }
northwest.
The sacking of the store was horrible
sight, especially for Allen, Hundreds of
savages, crazed with hunger, tore log
from log and seized upon everything
edible. They fought like snakes with
each other for morsel, and in the morn
ing the cold winter sun threw frozen
beams upon the men who had been killed
for food. Did they want it for themselves!
Not one of them. Down the side of that
ragged, clearless mountains were babies,
red as prairie fires, but human and hun
CRY. Up from the lodges came wailings
and lamentatiOn, answered back from the
mOuntain-top with shrieks of rage and
pain, as mighty warriors strove with each
other for the broken food that would STOP
an infants suffering. 1t was for the
brats that they broke Mr.. Allen up in
business not for themselves, and when
they Quilted his store, they turned TO his
house for more. Refused, they concoct-
ed devilish scheme of vengeance, and
what is very much more to the point,
they carried it out.
If there is dearer thing to an Indian
than his God, it is his child. Some pious
people may not understand the possibili-
ty of such a preference, but they should
remember that they are civilized and
that in civilization lots of things rank the
babies. The Indian doesn't look at it So.
First in his mind comes the child and
that child he will feed at the expense of
his life. He doesn't reconcile himself
to the idea that starving young one is
but bud opening into the perfect flower.
He finds no resignation in a romantic
deception of the inevitable. When his
papoese is hungry he is going to skirmish
for fodder, and if he gets licked he takes
it quietly, SO quietly that he never moves
around much afterward. Understanding
his own feelings, he ascribes the same to
others, and the Wood mountain end of
the schedule, conjecturing that if they
secured Aliens baby he would put up az
amount of nour1shment as a ransom,
broke into the house and yanked the
youngster from its mothers arms. Of
course that made trouble. The mother
couldn't stand it, and the row COM
menced.
Up through coulees shrek of mourn
ing rent the air and drifted away to find
its echoes in the mountains. Red women
moaned with despair over the dead bodies
of husbands and sons. Dusky faces were
pressed upon the snow that melted under
hot tears of grief for husbands and
brothers slain in the grapple for grub,
for after all, grief is colorless, and at
tacks, irrespective of hue. The copper
skinned savage has cardiac entrail as
susceptible TO love as-well as the aver
age city woman-and she misses her
loves and mourns them as bitterly.
Through the camp that stood like great
ghosts in the Pickering of the fires, men
still fought and wrestled, and at the up
per end of the village a great crowd
gathered around the white baby. There
was no disposition to hurt it. To its
captors it was circulating medium rep
resenting so much food, for which they
were perfectly willing to trade it. They
could not harm it, for it belonged to